REVIEW: Brutal Nature #4

I initially chose this title, from my list of books to review, simply based upon the name. Brutal Nature, how badass does that sound? Well lucky for me, this book ended up being more than just a pretty face. The story provided by Luciano Saracino definitely took me by surprise. His writing was concise, and by the end it left a great message about cultural destruction. All of which was aided greatly by Ariel Olivetti and his painted interiors.

When I first opened this story, I have to admit that my expectations were incredibly low. Who needs another story about a revolution against tyrannical invaders? But what was transpiring to be another boring derivative of 1984, Luciano ended up surprising me with a very compelling ending. It was a brutally honest nod to the rape of South American culture by the Christian imperative, and I loved it. Stories like this do not come around very often, so I am inclined to treasure every bit of it that I can. However, story alone cannot support the graphic novel industry. As I have always said, even with an amazing story, most writers often fail when it comes to their dialogue. Thankfully, this was not the case. Luciano did a great job ensuring that each time a character spoke it was with an agenda, driving the story forward rather than coming to a screeching halt. If I had to give any criticism to his writing it would be the way he handled the final confrontation between Ich, The German, and Sebastian. Both fights felt short and anti-climatic, which begs the question to whether there was any real danger at all. But all of that is fine with me, personally, since I usually detest fight scenes. More drama, less fighting I say.

For anyone familiar with his work, it should come to no surprise that I was blown away by the quality of the artwork from Ariel. I am a HUGE sucker for his painted pages, rather than the standard contour lines, and that is exactly what I got. It was a ton of fun watching Ariel shift from timid scenes of dolphins under the moon, to butchered Spaniards lying dead beneath a burning city. He absolutely nailed the color and facial expressions, not to mention the overall pacing of the story. There is not a single flaw in his work that I could spot; and I would like to make note to his jungle panels with the blue flames. Absolutely gorgeous.

With all of this in mind, I am almost ashamed that I grabbed this book purely based off of the title, but I am glad that I did. Luciano and Ariel did an amazing job with this issue. Both the writing and the art was incredible. I highly suggest picking this book up. As for me, I am going to hunt down the back issues to see how it all started. I give Brutal Nature #4 a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

About The Author

I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.

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